Goal of stores, customers is same: Many happy returns

If you don't plan to join the thundering herd trampling into stores to return holiday gifts today, well, you're not alone.

George Hruby likely isn't there either.

Hruby, of Logan, said last week that he learned a hard lesson the one time he tried to return a gift the day after Christmas.

"Everyone knows there are two times you don't want to go: Thanksgiving weekend and the weekend after Christmas," he said. "I made the mistake once. Then I realized you can wait. You usually have 60 days.

"But there's a secret to making it a lot easier. I have my wife do it. She sometimes comes back with more than she goes with, but that's one of the costs of the holiday."

Despite the proliferation of gift cards in recent years, returning gifts soon after Christmas is either a rite, tradition or mind-numbing chore, depending on your disposition. And while some chains have tried to crack down with stricter return policies, most try to do what they can to accommodate honest returnees and keep them in good cheer for future buying trips.

While return policies vary from store to store — checking Web sites is the best bet for details, and online purchases sometimes have different return policies — The Wall Street Journal has reported that some chains are using better purchase tracking technology to help determine whether to deny exchanges or returns. Guess Inc., Staples Inc., Sports Authority Inc. and Limited Brands Inc. are among the chains doing so.

But Daniel Butler, vice president for retail operations for the National Retail Federation, said it's a matter of trying to catch profit-sucking fraud rather than intimidating the sincere returnees.

"Customers are really in the driver's seat here. . . . Retailers don't want to lose any good customers over a return or exchange transaction, so it's important for the consumer to know this isn't a move geared toward alienating the customer base. It's actually geared toward protecting the retailer. It's a protection against fraud. And I think that's the part that gets missed."

As a group, consumers appear to be understanding about the terms of return policies. A federation survey indicates that 91.2 percent of respondents find stores' return policies to be fair, up from 90.1 percent last year.

Count Jerry Burcham of Salt Lake City among them. "Most gifts, I keep," he said. "It seems like now you have to have receipts. When I was a kid, you didn't. But I think it's safer that way. There are a lot of crooks."